Peter DeFazio

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time. Parliamentary Inquiry

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, I claim the time in opposition to the motion to recommit.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, if only we had a President who would take meaningful action against China. It has recently been revealed that the President--regular order, Madam Chair, I hear some kind of wiggling on that side--whining, whining. Okay. Yeah, we just recently found out that he begged Premier Xi Jinping to buy more farm products to help his reelection. And, by the way, he said he liked the prison camps, he thought they were a good idea. He actually said that. So, you know, if we had a President who would act against dictators. Putin murdering U.S. troops, while he is still cozying up to Putin. So, you know, anything with China is a result of the MFN for China, which granted, came under President Bill Clinton. I voted against it. A large majority of Republicans voted for it. Perhaps we have a different group of Republicans here now who wouldn't have voted for MFN for China, or would support my resolution to withdraw from the WTO because of the WTO and the dominance of China and its lack of effectiveness. And I hope to have that vote later this year, although it was precluded during this time period by the Rules Committee. So we have the most stringent Buy America requirements of any part of the government in the Transportation and Infrastructure sections of this bill. Most stringent. We closed the last loopholes for transit and rail being used by Communist government-owned or controlled corporations in China. We have done that. And, you know, it is time to bring things back to the United States of America. Bring back pharmaceutical production. Let's stop being driven by the pharmaceutical industry here. I still remember the Medicaid part D vote, the Republican bill, it prohibited the government from negotiating lower drug prices because Big Pharma runs this place on that side of the aisle. And now here we have--all of a sudden we developed a concern about human rights and China. Well, you have been pretty absent for the last, oh, let's see, when you were in the majority until very recently--60 percent of my career has been in the minority. So the last time you held the majority for 10 years or so, you didn't do anything on any of these things. You had President Bush, he didn't do anything on these things. You have President Trump who is cozying up to the dictator of China. And now you come here, and say, Oh, we are going to fix all this with this vote. We have taken the strongest, strongest stand in the infrastructure sections of this bill, and it is fully within the rights of the President to take further action to punish China for these sorts of things. Madam Speaker, I recommend a ``no'' vote on this motion to recommit.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, I yield myself 10 seconds. The gentlewoman says, save taxpayer dollars. What she wants to do is reduce the pay of skilled workers in America. That is not saving. They are taxpayers, by the way. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rose).

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, may I inquire how much time is remaining on either side.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, I would like to inquire as to the time left on either side.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Garcia), a member of the committee.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I certainly did not mean to have her interpret I am disparaging her State. It is a beautiful State. I visited there. You have some fabulous breweries based there, one from Colorado and one from San Francisco because you have clean water. Of course, if one of these other amendments earlier is adopted, you would not have clean water and the breweries might go away, but that is okay, that is just a Republican philosophical talking point. The gentlewoman said the average wage is $20 an hour, so I don't know what she is concerned about. I have two pages of Davis-Bacon prevailing wages in North Carolina, and I only see one of about 50 entries that is $20.92 an hour, so it doesn't seem there is much purpose to her amendment. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Jeffries), the Chair of the Democratic Caucus.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Norcross).

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds. I stand corrected. There are three categories out of 50 that get more than $20 an hour. Blaster. Do you want a blaster that earns $7.25 an hour? I don't think so. That might not be too good. A crane rough, all terrain up there, they earn $21.25 an hour in North Carolina. And a slipform machine, laying concrete. So there are three categories who could have their wages reduced or all of these people could have their wages reduced because many are at $14, $15, $16, $12 an hour even. And under her amendment, those protections go away. We can have a rush to the bottom. And she somehow is implying that minority contractors want to pay people less or will pay people less or can't afford to pay people. We have very strong disadvantaged business enterprise provisions in this bill. Madam Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentlewoman from Iowa (Ms. Finkenauer).

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to section 5 of the House Resolution 1028, I offer amendments en bloc.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I am not quite certain what the gentlewoman is objecting to. Now, I realize her State has a $7.25 an hour minimum wage. Great, work 40 hours a week, live in abject poverty. Okay. So the wages for Davis-Bacon projects in her State aren't much better. These aren't living wages. They aren't family wages. They aren't wages where you can go home to your family, not have to hold a second job, raise your kids, clothe them, send them to school, give them a good education, maybe help them pay for postsecondary education. No, she is complaining about carpenters under Davis-Bacon in her State, they earn $25,000 a year under Davis-Bacon. Wow. Wow. 25,000 bucks a year. That is outrageous. If they worked for the State minimum wage, we could get that down to less than $20,000 a year. That is great. What kind of carpenter are you going to get for that wage? I don't think you are going to find any living in your State anymore. Ironworkers, well, they get a bit more, kind of up there on the heights and all that. They get up to almost $28,000 a year. $28,000 a year for an ironworker? Amazing. Oh, and then truck drivers. The heavy truck drivers who work on construction, they get $13.50 an hour. So she is alarmed at these outrageous wages that are being paid to these people and how it is impinging upon projects in her State. Why, they could get lots of people to do that for $7.25 an hour. Of course, they wouldn't have any skills, but what the heck. So, you know, what we have found, first off, these aren't union negotiated, these are done by locale because, yes, these wages would be much higher in other areas. Apparently, in her State you can buy a house for 15 or $20,000 down there or rent a nice apartment for 400, 300 bucks a month, so you can live on those kinds of wages. But other places it is not so inexpensive. And what we are trying to prevent is history. Low-bid contractors that often come in from out of State provide shoddy workmanship, but, yes, it was cheaper, it is cheaper. If you want a crappy job, hire somebody who is the low-bid contractor, who has unskilled people working for them. We are setting a standard here. Studies show that the most in any region around the country, because these are done in very discrete regions--there are quite a number of regions in her State, I was using the averages here; some of them are even lower, a few are higher. But the average, under a dispassionate analysis by the EPI, would be it could raise wages by as much as 10 percent. Wages are one-quarter of the job cost. So 10 percent of one-quarter would mean you would add 2\1/2\ percent to the job so people could have a decent living wage, decent benefits and raise a family, maybe even own a home, car. Wow. Of course, they couldn't take transit to work if the Republicans were successful in their version of this bill. You know, we found higher productivity that comes from this. This is a fight we have had many times on this floor, and I am afraid that there will be a number of Republicans who oppose her amendment. I certainly will be asking for a recorded vote. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Oregon (Ms. Bonamici).

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Neal).

Mr. DeFAZIO. Finally, Mr. Speaker, we get to the issue at hand, the INVEST in America Act which is the core of this infrastructure package. It is the biggest part, but there are many other very important things. The President, as a candidate, campaigned on infrastructure. That gave us some bipartisan hope. We met with him a year ago last March at the White House: He asked the Speaker: Well, Nancy, what are you thinking? She said: Well, $1 trillion to $1.3 trillion. The President said: No. No. $2 trillion. Okay. He bid us up. We said: Good. We could spend that money productively. Then we said: Okay, what do we define as infrastructure? Here is what the list was: highways, bridges, transit, rail, wastewater, drinking water and broadband. Those things are in this package at near the level that he asked because his number was a 10-year number for $2 trillion. We are close to $1 trillion with those things in this package. So there have been seven infrastructure weeks under the Trump administration. The only product they have produced that directly addresses transportation infrastructure are their annual budgets, each of which has proposed dramatic cuts in investment in transportation infrastructure. Never, never--we have heard they are on the cusp for producing a $1 trillion bill, now it is a $2 trillion bill. Where is it? Where is the alternative? If it is their alternative, then it is status quo funding and nothing that deals with climate change. I don't know where it is. This is the beginning of the real infrastructure week. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 2, the Moving Forward Act. America's infrastructure is in crisis. As Chair of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, I've been sounding the alarm for some time now about the need to make massive investments in our crumbling infrastructure so we create jobs and safer, smarter transportation systems, and so we can cut the carbon pollution that is taking an enormous toll on the public health of our families and our planet. Given what we've seen over the past few months--from a global pandemic and the resulting economic collapse, to the urgent need to address generations of structural and systematic racism--it has never been so apparent that we need bold action to rebuild America. I'd like to take a moment to discuss one reason why this Moving Forward Act is so important. This bill once again reauthorizes the urgently needed Disadvantaged Business Enterprise, or DBE, program at the Department of Transportation. In case it's not obvious to the casual observer, discrimination is alive and well in this country. The death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police, the ensuing protests, and the police response-- these events have all shed more light on the large disparities minorities face in our criminal justice system. Unfortunately, those disparities are not limited to the criminal justice system. For many years this Committee, and other Members of Congress, have gathered evidence and testimony attesting to systemic discrimination faced by women and minorities in their attempts to establish, grow and operate businesses all across the country. The challenges are daunting, and discrimination affects minority and women entrepreneurs at every stage of the process, from access to investment dollars and credit, to biased treatment from customers, suppliers and regulators, to acute vulnerability to sudden economic downturns such as we've seen in the face of Covid-19. Unfortunately, even with the DBE Program, discrimination still haunts us in the market to construct and maintain our federal surface transportation system. We hear about it from constituents and others who work as contractors in the transportation industry. We've read about it in personal statements submitted by women- and minority- small business owners from across the country. And we see it reflected in mounds of statistical evidence compiled by my Committee. This evidence includes many thousands of pages of rigorous statistical analysis demonstrating clear disparities between the capacity of minority- and women-owned businesses to compete for Federal dollars, and the utilization of that capacity by Federal contractors. Today, I'd like to submit just a sample of this evidence to the Congressional Record in support of the reauthorization of this essential program. The Moving Forward Act is a game-changer--because it's an investment in workers, families, and communities. As Chair of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, I'm particularly focused on investing in our roads, bridges, transit, rail, and water systems. In the Moving Forward Act, we do that by modernizing the crumbling roads and bridges we already have. We address bottlenecks and gridlock, while building out the infrastructure for low- and zero-emission vehicles and encourage transit-oriented housing. We give people better and more reliable public transit options, whether you're trying to get across town on a bus or on light-rail, or going hundreds or even thousands of miles on Amtrak. We encourage smarter road designs to bring down the sharp rise in pedestrian and cyclist deaths, and make sure our roads are safer in rural areas and for kids who need safe routes to school. We invest in new technologies, projects, and construction materials that are efficient and resilient--so that when we build a new bridge, we know it will last for decades, not just until the next extreme weather event. In summary, the INVEST in America Act, which is the centerpiece of the Moving Forward framework, provides nearly $500 billion over five years to bring our nation's crumbling infrastructure to a state of good repair, improve resiliency, address climate change, improve safety and provide investments in both rural and low-income communities who need it most. Add to that the $1 trillion in additional investment in schools, housing, broadband access, drinking and wastewater infrastructure, airports, ports and more, and you have a package that will make a huge impact on our economy. This is exactly the kind of investment we need to help our economy recover from the current pandemic. I hope my colleagues will join me in supporting this legislation. Mr. Speaker, as I mentioned previously, H.R. 2 once again reauthorizes the urgently needed Disadvantaged Business Enterprise, or DBE, program at the Department of Transportation. Unfortunately, even with the DBE Program, discrimination still haunts us in the market to construct and maintain our federal surface transportation system. We hear about it from constituents and others who work as contractors in the transportation industry. We've read about it in personal statements submitted by women- and minority- small business owners from across the country. And we see it reflected in mounds of statistical evidence compiled by my Committee. This evidence includes many thousands of pages of rigorous statistical analysis demonstrating clear disparities between the capacity of minority- and women-owned businesses to compete for Federal dollars, and the utilization of that capacity by Federal contractors. These studies represent thousands of pages of complex rigorous analysis by many different authors in every region of our nation. And while the findings are better than in the early days of the DBE program, we still have a long way to go. I'd like to just highlight a tiny fraction of the information found in these studies: Just so my colleagues don't think I am picking on their states, let me start with Oregon. The 2016 ODOT Disparity Study found that women- and minority-owned firms only won 61 cents on the dollar of what we would expect given their availability on state and federally funded highway contracts. Non-minority women, African Americans and Native Americans did even worse at 52 cents, 58 cents and 49 cents respectively. (Oregon Department of Transportation 2016 Availability and Disparity Study, Keen Independent Research, June, 2016, at 7-12.) In Texas DOT spending, women and minority own firms as a group won only 60 cents on the dollar of what we might have expected for state-funded transportation projects given their availability in the market. Non- minority women, African Americans, Hispanic Americans and Native Americans all did worse. Indeed, African Americans won only 22 cents on the dollar and Native Americans won only 18 cents on the dollar. The numbers were even worse when considering only federal funds--32 cents on the dollar when considering FHWA contracts alone. Texas Department of Transportation Disparity Study 2019, Colette Holt & Associates, 2019, at 94, 126. For Maryland, which has had one of the more robust and continuously operated DBE programs in the nation, DBEs still get only 70 cents on the dollar of combined federal and state transportation funding. For African Americans, the number is 50 cents, for Native Americans it's 43 cents and for non-minority women, the number is 56 cents. Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Disparity Study, Volumes 1-3, Prepared for the State of Maryland, NERA Economic Consulting, June 25, 2018, at Vol. 1, p. 224. Sadly, in the transit industry, things are not much better. For instance, a recent analysis of contracting for the Los Angeles, California Metropolitan Transportation Authority, found that firms owned by women and minorities make about 74 cents on the dollar of what we would expect given their representation in the marketplace. For non- minority women, the number was 59 cents and for African Americans it was 51 cents. 2017 Disparity Study LA Metro, prepared for the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (LA Metro), BBC Research & Consulting, January, 2018, at 7-6. These same troubling statistics are repeated in cities and states that spend some of their budgets on surface transportation and similar construction and architecture and engineering projects. For instance, the 2018 study for the Nashville, Tennessee area found that M/WBEs got 54 cents of every one dollar in construction prime contracting that we would expect given their availability in the market. Asian American firms were at 25 cents on the dollar. Firms owned by Hispanic Americans earned only 1 cent of every dollar we would expect for them receive given their marketplace availability. Metro Nashville Tennessee Disparity Study Final Report, Griffin and Strong, P.C., August, 2018, at 83. There's no doubt that things are better today than before the DBE Program--more firms owned by women and minorities get work than they did forty years ago. But the progress has been slow, halting and exceedingly fragile. One of the powerful things about the disparity study evidence we have collected is the diversity of approaches and analyses these documents provide. Some studies, for instance, not only study disparities and in the public and private surface transportation markets, but they also attempt to analyze what might occur if the DBE program no longer existed. One interesting example is found in the LA Metro study where they compared the participation of minority- and women-owned firms on contracts that had goals to encourage diverse participation and those that did not. The results are stunning: on contracts with goals, participation occurred at almost the level we would expect given the presence of minority- and women-owned firms in the marketplace; on contracts with goals, firms owned by minorities and women earned 96 cents on the dollar--on contracts without goals, they earned 53 cents on the dollar. The numbers are even more startling for certain subgroups: on contracts with goals, non-minority women actually exceeded parity (something that regularly occurs for firms owned by non-minority males, but rarely happens for firms owned by women and minorities). But on contracts without goals, firms owned by nonminority women earned only 37 cents on the dollar. Firms owned by Hispanic Americans approached parity on contracts with goals (98 cents on the dollar) but on contracts without goals, they earned only 59 cents on the dollar. African American owned firms earned only 64 cents on the dollar even on contracts with goals, and on contracts without goals the number plummeted to 30 cents on the dollar. 2017 Disparity Study LA Metro, prepared for the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (LA Metro), BBC Research & Consulting, January, 2018, at 7-7. The DBE program, and the businesses it assists, are so important that we planned to hold a hearing on this program before the Covid-19 pandemic swept the country and shut down Congressional operations for a time. We will still hold that hearing at a later date to collect even more evidence and discuss the possibility of updating this program. But sadly, the pandemic that prevented us from doing so only underscores the need. Current data on the pandemic's economic devastation shows a massively disproportionate impact on small businesses in minority communities. A very recent article by Dr. Robert Fairlie published by the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, uses statistics from the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey to illustrate just how devastating the Covid pandemic has already been for firms owned by minorities and women. His analysis examines the drop in ``active businesses'' comparing the numbers from mid-February, just before the effects of the pandemic became clear in the United States, to mid-April when the economy in much of the country had shut down. During that time, all businesses experienced economic devastation--but because of discrimination, the devastation was far greater for businesses owned by women and minorities. For instance, during this period the number of active businesses owned by whites dropped a staggering 17 percent, but the number of businesses owned by African Americans dropped an almost unimaginable 41 percent. For Latinx businesses, the number was 32 percent and for firms owned by Asian Americans the drop was 26 percent. These numbers are not just troubling, they are catastrophic, and the pandemic is far from over. The Impact of Covid-19 on Small Business Owners: Evidence of Early State Losses from the April 2020 Current Population Survey, Robert Fairlie, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, Working Paper 20-022, May 23, 2020, at 3-5. Now, more than ever, as we prepare to spend billions of federal dollars on transportation projects, it is urgent that we ensure the process of awarding federal transportation contract dollars is not discriminatory, and that minorities and women are allowed to compete on an equal playing field for those dollars. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute. I didn't see anybody in golf carts or T-shirts. They were on the screen, virtually. And it is not a great time to be flying back and forth across the country. I am not really comfortable doing it. I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Huffman).

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I would like to inquire as to the amount of time remaining.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer), a leader on transportation issues.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 1028, I call up the bill (H.R. 2) to authorize funds for Federal-aid highways, highway safety programs, and transit programs, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Kelly).

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and insert extraneous material on H.R. 2.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky).

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, our Nation is simultaneously confronted with multiple crises. COVID, we have passed four bills in this House to deal with COVID directly in terms of medical care, potential for vaccines, treatments, and mitigation of the incredible economic harm. The fourth bill is still lingering with an uncertain future in the Senate. Then the murder of George Floyd brought a long-simmering crisis to a head for our Nation. Last week this House passed the Justice in Policing Act to deal with systemic racism in policing. This bill deals with another crisis. Denied by the President and denied by most in his party is the existential threat of climate change to the world as we know it, to our Nation, to our coastal areas, to our inland areas, to everything, our crops, our future, our children's future and our grandkids' future. So before us today is a long overdue transportation, comprehensive, 21st century--the first 21st century--transportation bill that moves beyond the Eisenhower era and just reauthorizing the same old programs all the time. It also deals with the incredibly deteriorated infrastructure in this country. There is bipartisan agreement that it needs investment. But the last bill we did in the House was status quo funding. We need to invest much more to begin to deal with that crisis. This bill also deals with the other crises. It deals with COVID in terms of we are going to need an economic recovery. This is going to look a lot more like--it already does--the Great Depression, and we are going to need to put people back to work. We are going to need millions of good-paying jobs. These aren't just construction jobs, they are design, they are engineering, they are small businesses, and they are manufacturing. There is a host of people--everybody will be touched by this bill, and the investments will provide returns many, many times over. It also targets the largest single contributor to CO2 pollution in this country. Now, Mr. Speaker, if you don't believe in climate change and you don't believe CO2 is the problem, then you don't want to deal with it in a transportation bill. In fact, an alternative was offered by my Republican colleagues in committee where we considered 300 amendments. They had one that was a substitute. It wouldn't reduce carbon pollution by 1 ounce. There is no crisis, there is no climate change. Donald Trump said so, and you can't cross the guy. So we wove the climate change provisions throughout this bill. They complained: Well, it is not bipartisan. But we have a disagreement in principle, and you can't compromise on principle. We are going to deal with the largest source of carbon pollution in the United States of America here and now, today, this week. We are starting. We have delayed too long. We are already at dangerous levels. It also is going to deal with systemic racism and discrimination in the parts of the bill that deal with education, housing, and access to transportation, but in one particular provision that is critical to the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, the disadvantaged business enterprise program. The committee has for years accumulated evidence and testimony attesting to systemic discrimination faced by women and minorities in their attempts to establish, grow, and operate businesses all across the country. The challenges are daunting. Discrimination affects minority and women entrepreneurs at every stage of the process from access to investment, to credit, to biased treatment from customers, suppliers, and regulators, to acute vulnerability to sudden economic downturns as we have seen with the COVID crisis. Unfortunately, even with the existing DBE program, discrimination still haunts us in the market to construct and maintain our Federal transportation system. We have documented this in testimony, and today we have and will provide mounds of statistical evidence documenting this. Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record a list of 30 cities. Disparity Study Reports Submitted to the Congressional Record During General Debate on H.R. 2, Submitted on the House Floor June 30, 2020 (The full text of each report is held on file electronically with the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.) Texas Department of Transportation Disparity Study 2019, Colette Holt & Associates, 2019. City of Columbus Disparity Study, Mason Tillman Associates, Ltd., July 2019. 2018 Disparity Study City of Virginia Beach, BBC Research & Consulting, January, 2019. City of Tacoma Disparity Study, Final Report, Griffin and Strong, P.C., August, 2018. Metro Nashville Tennessee Disparity Study Final Report, Griffin and Strong, P.C., August, 2018. Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Disparity Study, Volumes 1-3, Prepared for the State of Maryland, NERA Economic Consulting, June 25, 2018. City of New York Disparity Study, MGT Consulting Group, May 2018. 2017 Minnesota Joint Disparity Study--Minnesota Department of Transportation Draft Report, Keen Independent Research, January, 2018. 2017 Disparity Study LA Metro, prepared for the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (LA Metro), BBC Research & Consulting, January, 2018. Washington State Department of Transportation Disparity Study 2017, Colette Holt & Associates, 2017. 2017 Disparity Study City of Charlotte, BBC Research & Consulting, November 7, 2017. State of New York 2016 MWBE Disparity Study Final Report, Volume 1, Mason Tillman Associates, Ltd., June 2017. Disparity Study, Idaho Department of Transportation, BBC Research and Consulting, May 4, 2017. Caltrans 2016 Disparity Study, prepared for the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), BBC Research & Consulting, April 28, 2017. San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District Disparity Study, Volumes 1-2, Miller3 Consulting Inc., January 12, 2017. KCATA Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Availability Study 2016, prepared for the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority, Kansas City, MO, Colette Holt and Associates, 2016. Disparity Study, prepared for the Georgia Department of Transportation, Griffin and Strong, P.C., August, 2016. 2016 Availability and Disparity Study, prepared for the State of Montana Department of Transportation in cooperation with the US Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration, Keen Independent Research, July, 2016. Oregon Department of Transportation 2016 Availability and Disparity Study, Keen Independent Research, June, 2016. City of Philadelphia Fiscal Year 2015 Annual Disparity Study, Econsult Solutions, June 8, 2016. Disparity Study for Corpus Christi and CCRTA: Analysis of the Availability of Minority- and Women-Owned Businesses and Their Utilization By the Corpus Christi Regional Transportation Authority, Corpus Christi Regional Transportation Authority, Texas A&M University Corpus Christi-South Texas Economic Development Center, March, 2016. 2015-16 Ohio Public Authorities Disparity Study, prepared for the Ohio Department of Transportation, BBC Research & Consulting, April, 2016. Ilinois State Toll Highway Authority Disparity Study-- Construction and Construction Related Services 2015, Colette Holt & Associates, 2015. Pace Suburban Bus Disparity Study 2015, Colette Holt & Associates, 2015. Arizona Department of Transportation Disparity Study Report, Keen Independent Research, July 28, 2015. North Carolina Department of Transportation Disparity Study 2014, Colette Holt & Associates, 2014. Business Market Availability and Disparity Study, prepared for the California High-Speed Rail Authority, Mason Tillman Associates, Ltd., June, 2014. Nevada Department of Transportation Disparity Study Final Report, Keen Independent Research, December 6, 2013. City and County of Denver Minority/Women Owned/ Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Disparity Study, MGT of America, July 29, 2013. Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Disparity Study, Volumes I-III, prepared for the Maryland Department of Transportation, NERA Economic Consulting, July 5, 2013.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, just in response to the gentleman, he had a duplicative amendment on resilience. There is $6.25 billion for predisaster mitigation resilience in this bill. But again, building in resilience is only dealing with the effects of climate change, not reducing climate change. He said: Oh, we should just throw up our hands because the Chinese are polluting the hell out of things. Oh, that is a great attitude. The U.S. used to be a leader on these policies until Trump came to the White House and said it is a hoax, and that sort of unleashed China and other countries. He said the U.S. is out of the Paris Agreement. That unleashed China and these other countries. But we can deal with it. We can deal with it in our trade policy. We can put a huge tax on imports that are contributing to fossil fuel pollution. We can deal with this, and we should deal with this as a nation, but we need to show leadership again in this area. Then he talked about there is nothing for electricity in this bill-- and he can come down later for the debate on the E&C section. There is a massive investment on renewables, a massive investment in transmission in this bill. So that is not quite accurate. And the user fee, guess what? We have been in a shortfall on the user fee for about two decades. The last time we increased the user fee was when we had a Republican over there with guts named Bud Shuster, who stood up to Newt Gingrich and joined with the majority of Democrats and raised the Federal gas tax. It hasn't been raised since 1993, 27 years. And when they did the FAST Act, what did they do? They made up phony things. They said: Oh, we are going to take money from the Federal Reserve that doesn't exist, that is, $26 billion. Oh, we are going to have private tax collection that is going to make money--except it has been tried twice under Republican Presidents and it loses money. And they came up with all of these phony pay-fors, and they say it was paid for by user fees. No, it was paid for out of the general fund. It ran a $90 billion deficit, paid for out of the general fund. We borrowed the money. It is an investment. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Washington (Ms. DelBene).